A White Door
by TheLightofGallifrey
Summary: There was a room that never went away. It belonged her, of course; his pink and yellow human. Finally after so long the door opens, and the Doctor can remember her. He remembers how much he truly loved her, so he does what he does best: run, but the Rose he runs to and finds is broken, and can't be fixed. Can he give life to her again without risking his own? 11/Rose
1. Chapter 1

There was a room that never went away. Sometimes when his companions were sleeping and the screams of the past, present, and future horrors were too loud to withstand, he would go there. Just across from his own room. Always in that spot. And that was curious, mind, because depending on her mood, the TARDIS made her rooms shift quite often. She could even make some disappear, which she usually chose to do when someone left him. And often, when he was bored or spent from saving someone from their nightmares, he would find completely new rooms filled with whatever she felt like filling it with, just to amuse him. But this room always stayed across from his, and the door was always the same.

White. Simple. Made of wood, which was peculiar for a spaceship, he supposed, even considering his own Sexy was wooden on the outside. But what made the door beautiful, so heart-renderingly perfect, was the knot in the center of it. It was, well, in the shape of a rose.

The Doctor had studied every subject imaginable to a human, and even to a Gallifreyan and three hundred other species as well. He spent one day (well, part of day, considering it only took him about an hour to read the sixty volumes the TARDIS supplied him with) studying the properties and tendencies of wood, following a rather sticky situation involving New New New France's Cyber Musketeers and wooden jail cells the sonic could not manipulate. The fact of the matter was that wood just didn't do that.

Here the Doctor stood, alone. Amy and Rory were… well, gone. The lonely silence was so profound around him he could hear his hearts beating, feel the rumble of the Time Vortex working the engine beneath his feet, and feel his ship catapult through whatever galaxy he was in now.

He never tried to enter her room. He knew it would simply be too painful. Every now and then, when he felt he was at his weakest, he would press the pads of his fingers against the door and push. Of course, nothing would happen. He didn't expect it to, even if deep down he yearned for even the slightest budge.

But maybe that was a good thing, he reasoned. Taking a deep breath, the Doctor felt his lungs expanding, filling them with oxygen. He could still smell and taste that hint of Gallifreyan air, despite the 900 odd years since the TARDIS's maiden voyage and the numerous places he traveled to. The smell reminded him of the red grass and the wind in the mountains that shone silver at night. It reminded him how beautiful his lost planet was, and how lonely he had become.

Exhaling the air and expelling the thought from his clustered mind, the Doctor closed his ancient eyes. They ached sometimes. Seeing all the chaos, the pain, and even the joys of Time and Space hurt. He had witnessed too much, and yet he was still hungry for _so_ much more.

Opening his green orbs once again and taking another breath, the Doctor mumbled a word longingly, fruitlessly hopeful that the word would somehow fix everything, fix him.

"Rose."

Oh, how bittersweet it was to say that name again. He couldn't remember ever saying that name in his eleventh incarnation, and even in the final days of his tenth. It was just too painful. It brought too many memories back to the surface.

They had had fun together. And blimey, how fast and far they had run. She never tired of running with him, every after they were ripped away from one another. His hearts ached remembering those times on Bad Wolf Bay, remembering seeing tears running without abandon down her face, and every guard and wall she had crumbled by the power of her sorrow.

I love you, she had said. Quite right to, he had foolishly responded. If only he had spared his pride and got to the point. If only…

_Stop_. He commanded himself. A voice of reason, the one with the old face and the swept back white hair, called out in his mind, _What ifs… they kill. _

"Rose." He let the word tumble from his mouth like a sigh once again. The Doctor pressed his forehead against the door and then suddenly found himself catching his footing. Odd.

But… the door was open. He had opened it. Or...

"Thanks, Sexy." He whispered under his breathing, earning a warm hum in return from his stolen ship, his constant companion.

And so he was presented with a choice. Should he enter? Was it worth resurfacing all that he had worked so hard to forget?

A small waft of an old, familiar aroma graced his nostrils. It smelled like honey and vanilla and something that was indescribably _her. _The tendril of scent clouded his judgment for no more than a millisecond, but that was enough. Almost against his will, he took a step into her room.

It was the exact same as how she had left it. Bed made, but not well; the pale pink duvet was ruffled at the edge of her bed, almost in the indentation of someone sitting there. Clothes were scattered about the floor, as were various tubes of product and make up. The pictures held up against the pale yellow walls were fading, and some had come loose from the tape holding them up. He took a step towards them and noticed that they were all of him and her, well, the old scrawny and devilish him, and even some of the old _old_ him, complete with big ears and leather jacket.

He placed his fingers against a picture of her standing in front of the cityscape of New New York, tongue sticking out of her mouth in that signature, Cheshire grin. If only he could go back and touch her again, hear her laugh.

Tearing himself away from the pictures, he sat next to the crinkled part of her bedspread.

"I miss you, you know." He muttered, his voice cracking slightly. He cleared his throat and tried again. "I miss you. Even when I had Amy and Rory, I missed you. Martha was a good friend, and Donna was fantastic, but you… Rose Tyler. You captivated me." He looked down at the seat next to him, imagining her there.

"And", his breath caught in his throat, and he could feel the sting of tears behind his eyes. "And even now, after all these years, you still captivate me. And if only I had told you that I loved you. I loved you more than words, more than life. More than the Lion King." He finished meekly, and for a second his face adopted the roguish grin of his previous life.

The Doctor closed his eyes and brought her face to the surface of his mind. He could just picture her, standing in front of him, choking out her profession of love. And then he pictured her as she ran to him, right before the stray Dalek struck him down. Soon his mind was flashing at the speed of light of all the times he had spent with her, until a single tear rolled down his face. Opening his eyes abruptly, the visions stopped. He brought a hand to his face and wiped away the tear.

"Time to go." He muttered forlornly. Slowly, he rose from the bed, the indent in the duvet right next to her own, the one she had left and had curiously remained for so long.

"At least it's like we're together, eh?" He whispered again.

As he pulled the door open to leave, his ears picked up on the slightest noise. A peal of laughter, distant, yet somehow right next to him. The Doctor let his head fall. It was her laugh.

Turning to take in the image of her room for the last time for a while, he murmured, "Thanks, Old Girl."

The laughter still rung in his head as he closed the portal to her room.

"Well," he said as he pressed his back against the door, "Allonsy."


	2. Chapter 2, A Spark, A Bang

_Hi, all! I'm posting this as a possibility- I'm not sure if it's going to be good, but I'm just going to go for it. So please tell me what you think, because reviews are my motivation for updates! I know it's been a while since I posted the first chapter, but I promise it won't be like that in the possible future. So yeah. Please read and please enjoy! _

_A White Door, Chapter 2, A Spark, A Bang_

In the darkest days, when floating in the nothingness of the Vortex, when his nightmares haunted his open eyes, and when not even the gentle hum of his constant companion soothed his nerves, he wondered why he continued.

There were planets and people and things to save, of course. And as the last of his kind, he empathized with the underdog, the ones that had no hope but to pray to something. Often that something was him.

But he was sick of being that god, that god that lead the hopeless to believe in his ability to temporarily save them, and, when finally extricated from their thankful claws, would be worshipped. As if he were divine enough to be revered.

He wasn't, at least in his eyes. He was a vengeful god. A harbinger of death and entropy. The Oncoming Storm. The Great Warrior.

Did he even deserve to be called the Doctor, the namesake-the_ title_- of those who helped people? How many lives had he destroyed when trying to uphold his name? No. He was not worthy of being the Doctor. Like he had told River back in Manhattan, he had gotten too big. And just as his precious, precious Amelia had warned him back in Mercy, he had spent far too much time alone.

For the best, he told himself. Of course it was for the best. No one could get hurt when he traveled alone. He couldn't get hurt.

The day he lost Amelia and Rory the Roman was one of the blackest days of his near millennium of life. They were the fiercest companions he had had in a very long time. Amy's spunk, her tenacity, and even her ginger hair reminded him often of a youthful version of Donna. But something about Amy, perhaps her ability to believe in him without question, or maybe it was just because she was the first face he saw, made her a true gem to him. And Rory, Rory was perhaps the bravest man he had encountered in a long, long while. If there was one thing the Doctor treasured above all else, it was bravery. All of his companions were brave, every one of them, from his granddaughter to the Mr. Pond himself.

Sitting at the console, tinkering with a matrix stabilizer gear, his thoughts in a corner of his mind he often kept locked down, traveled to the first time he truly believed a solitary life would save not only some poor innocent human, but also himself. The day he lost _her_. Truly, truly, genuinely, lost her. Gone. _Poof._ Just a name in a long list of dead, but so much more in reality. "Or a parallel one," He corrected himself with a small smile.

Rose…Rose…_Rose…_

The name echoed in the recesses of his mind until the word practically screamed at him. Rose…_Rose…ROSE._

"_Stop!_ Stop it." The Doctor commanded himself sternly, closing his eyes tight and pressing the matrix stabilizer into his crinkled forehead. His defined chin protruded slightly as he bit his tongue to prevent himself from crying. "Stop." The word crumbled and died in his throat, barely escaping his vocal chords. But the shouting stopped, because even the brain of a Time Lord takes the occasional order or two.

It had been a week since the Doctor had gone into her room. The room with the white door. The chamber that still smelled like her, still held her clothes strewn about the floor, and still held the pictures of her past adventures against the yellow walls. It was a mausoleum of her, and a shrine of her memory in some respects. Everything about her, carefully preserved. Of course, he wished it would all burn, and that the door would disappear. But the TARDIS apparently disagreed with him. Cheeky Sexy, she was.

Often he wondered about Rose's life. Whether it was comfortable, and whether she and the Metacrisis had found love in one another. He sometimes wished they didn't, both out of jealousy and because he was no longer that man. He no longer had the windswept hair and the lanky body and the lean physique. The manic gleam was not as strong as it was, and he had lost that oral fixation. And though the memories of the Doctor transferred into the memories of the Metacrisis, he didn't transfer his personality or characteristics. For all he knew, the human version of himself could be completely different. He had given her a shadow of the real him, but it was better than letting her live with memories. At the time it seemed right. At the time.

Looking back on it, he wondered how daft he was to just let her go, even if there was no alternative. Would he rather her be alone, or her with a half-version of himself, a carbon copy minus the triple helix DNA and the quadruple thump of two hearts? In his bad days, he wished he never let his pink and yellow human go. He was _his_, the proper, old, alien _Doctor's_, and no one else's. But then that had changed, and he had let her go all but willingly…

His better side would often scold him for thinking so selfishly. At least he could give his favorite companion, his love, a piece of himself with a timeline linear with her own.

"Sexy," he called out to seemingly no one, but received a quizzical hum in return.

A thousand thoughts swam in the Doctor's brain at once, as they usually did. He fished for the right words, but only came up with, "Oh, nevermind."

The gear in his hand sparked, which was quite odd because the hunk of metal was not wired to anything electrical. "Oi! That wasn't very nice, now was it? I just talk sometimes, and don't always need answers. Love hearing the sound of my own voice, me." He dropped the gear and suckled his singed thumb and wagged his fist of his opposite hand at the air. "I do love the occasional game, but was that really necessary?"

A short grumble of a reply. The Doctor instantly grew panicked. "Hey, hey! Oi! Stop stop _stop _growling at me, you'll give us both indigestion and then I'll have to go and fix your triple frequency circuits and I'll have a belly ache all day."

Silence.

The Doctor puffed out his chest and swung his arms about, adjusting his tweed jacket. His lanky fingers then found his bowtie and straightened it. "Thank you." He muttered. The lights flickered.

"Yes, alright, apology accepted." He said, his voice only a little terse.

A gentle hum. The Doctor smiled. "Yes, I know you're sorry. But look at my thumb!" He waggled his thumb upwards, and briefly thought he looked like a mad man, but was definitely okay with that. "It's all red because you shocked me, and now when I touch it it stings like I got stung by one of those Hornabees in the Gamma Forest."

A wire above his head must have gone loose, _definitely_ not on accident, because a shower of sparks suddenly started spewing bright lights.

"Oh, okay, okay. That might have been a bit harsh, but please don't waste your power, because I really don't want to have to go to Cardiff to repower using that rift. Bad stuff in Cardiff. Awkward situations, you know."

A bang from a wire right next to that made the Doctor jump up.

"Please stop! That was an awfully big bang, and you might…" Suddenly, his thoughts were spinning. Sparks flew before his eyes, washing his line of vision in gold and red. Smoke started billowing around him. His hearts thumped.

A big bang…

_The _big bang..

Big Bang 2.0

A new universe.

No rift.

But that meant. "No!" He shouted, gripping his hair. "No, but it can't!."

But it did. He knew it did and he didn't realize it until now and he was so, _so_ stupid for not realizing it any sooner.

_Rose…_

…

_Sorry guys, but cliffhangers are good friends of mine. I really hoped you liked it, even if it was sort of short. Please review- they're what make me update. You can even tell me if you think the story line is a bit too… bad. I dunno. Anyway. I wish you all a happy start to 2013! _


	3. Chapter 3, Wilting

_Hi guys! Thanks for the awesome reviews and follows- they really mean a lot! I hope you guys like this chapter! I got to update early because I'm home sick with a fever. :-( but anyway. I have to apologize for some of the grammar/general errors made in the last chapter- in my excitement to upload I didn't spend too long editing. Also, sorry for making you guys tear up with the first chapter. In some ways it means a lot but in others it makes me feel awful XD Anyhow, I hope you enjoy this chapter. We get to take a look at Rose and her life. Allonsy!~~_

Stormy clouds cast their veil of grey over the scenery, washing color out of everything and creating the sense of nighttime, even though the large bell tower from the nearby church steeple had just beat out three gongs. The last strike of the bell wavered in the air, carried by the wind until it faded into an echo and finally died. Trees rustled slightly, the branches and limbs moaning and the August-green leaves chattering eerily. The church, the solitary guardian of its small plot of land, creaked under the force of the oncoming storm but held fast.

Nearby children were riding on bicycles and calling out to one another, their cheerful laughter captured by the wind and carried wherever the breeze took it. Amidst the grey and the morose atmosphere, their jubilance seemed displaced and unnatural. In a place where logically things stood alone, a tree with its own space, the church, the solitary grave standing under its edifice, their companionship felt like an insult. Not that these objects could feel offended though, but one creature who naturally did not belong in these surroundings, did feel rather perturbed.

She was kneeling by the grave, her jeans soaking up the dew from the lush grass. Hands were cradled in her lap, twisting and turning. Blonde hair whipped around her face, a few strands sticking to the tear tracks that made their way down her high cheekbones and dignified jaw. Her shoulders were quaking, both from sheer sorrow but also from the exhaustion of carrying such heavy burdens on their delicate form.

This was Rose Tyler, and she was broken.

She was broken because of the life she had led thus far, in her twenty odd years of life. Growing up in a small flat with her fiercely loving but slightly airy mother, then living an adventure of a lifetime and falling in love with every aspect of her life and the one constant who had shown her how brightly stars shine, and then spending day after day with someone like that man, but also different, and also one she loved very much. Spending her life with him became a whole different kind of adventure. Sure, they still fought the occasional alien, working with the corporation established in the other world to destroy her. And the thrill of that kept them both sated. Living a life of affluence was a transition, but one Rose settled into well enough. Having her father, well, half-sort-of-real father, was like finding a piece to a jigsaw puzzle, and it made her Mum happy. And Tony. Tony, her little brother who liked to play with toy airplanes and trains.

But the man she had spent the time beside the most, at least in the universe she inhabited now, made her life so much more than the life she thought she would live. Sure, at a time in her life she expected to always travel the stars with her ancient companion, but in realizing that that life was no longer possible, she convinced herself that what she really loved about that life wasn't the traveling, but the man himself. And she had him, but in some ways he was better. He could spent his life with her. He was the Doctor, but also so much more.

He went by Doctor John Noble-Smith. She was Mrs. John Noble-Smith to be.

But the 'to be' would never be fulfilled. Their history would never be written.

It was his name on that solitary grave stone. And that was what had truly broken Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth.

She choked back a sob and raised a clammy hand to wipe away her tears. "I-" She began, but couldn't find the words. "I can't believe you're here." It had been a month since his death, and the beginning of her darkest days.

The name etched into the white marble stone stared back at her, incapable of responding.

"I mean, you were always so _alive._ And good and strong and perfect." The last word broke a dam she had been suppressing, and fresh tears streamed down her face. "You weren't him, but that was okay. It was always okay because you were _you_. We defended the earth, made our own stories for people to tell. And I loved you." She looked up at the church and bit her bottom lip, fighting to control herself.

"And you loved me. And you told me, in all the ways he couldn't. You lead a life with me. You taught me-" She looked at his name, as if it would conjure him up and she would be able to tell him in person. "You taught me that life here, with you and with a house and a mortgage could be an adventure if you just chose to make it one."

Her mind flashed to an image of him, standing before her, holding a bouquet of yellow and pink roses, that classic grin nearly splitting his face in two. _"Rose Tyler, I have a surprise for you."_

"_What?" She asked, her voice lilting in a gentle laugh. _

_He waggled his eyebrows and shook his head. "It's a surprise." _

_Rose rolled her gentle brown eyes. "Doctor, really, what is it?" _

_The Doctor gave Rose her flowers. "Here."_

_The woman looked down at her namesake flora, and grinned up at him. "Giving me pink and yellow roses, real original. But really sweet." She added, taking a step forward and pecking him softly on the lips. He leaned down and deepened the contact, but then reluctantly pulled away. _

_His brown eyes smoldered briefly, but then transitioned to a more chaste expression, and he grinned again. _

"_Look at what's holding the roses together."_

_Rose was reluctant to do so, since kissing the Doctor was a very nice activity indeed, but decided to go along with his game. Her eyes rested to the rubber band holding the stems but then shot to the object dangling from them. _

"_Are those… house keys?"_

A bitter smile broke over Rose's mouth. "I still can't believe you made us leave the mansion and move house without asking me."

If he were here, he would have laughed sheepishly at her comment and pull her in for a kiss just to make her less angry.

She really felt like her heart was about to rip into two, sitting in the grey cemetery- if one could call it that. The Doctor had been buried alongside the church the pair had chosen for their wedding, just two weeks before he was prematurely taken from her. If his life couldn't begin in that building, at least he could spend eternity resting beside it.

A zeppelin roared overhead, interrupting the sounds of nature and Rose's lonely monologue. She looked up overhead and brought her eyebrows together in anger. Her eyes ablaze, almost literally, with her turbulent emotions, Rose returned her focus to the grave.

"It was your fault for dying, you know. Always thinkin' you were stronger than everybody else, always overestimating your abilities. But you were human, good and proper. One heart, one life, and one death." Her tears were hot now, and her words felt thick and full of venom, and so she spat them out at the grave, in fear that holding them back would poison her. "What the hell did you think would happen, going on that mission for Torchwood? Three units had been sent out, and none of them had returned. I told you to stay. Everyone told you to stay. But you went out _alone_. You wouldn't even take me, even though I told you I was never gonna leave you. And _you left ME!_" She screamed the last word, bending over and throwing her fists to the ground and beating them, her sobs loud as they racked her chest. Rose felt as though she were her younger self again, back when she was almost pulled through the void, pounding on the white wall keeping her from the real Doctor. Now, instead of a wall and the universe, the ground and a grave separated them. This new distance seemed worse, more heartbreaking and impossible.

"You left me here with nothin'. You let yourself be killed to stop them. But it didn't have to be you, it was _never supposed to be you._" Rose, at the back of her mind, was aware of the double-entendre of her words, but ignored it because of how ridiculous the idea was. "I was supposed to have a forever with you. Our forever. Growing old and having kids and a life." Her words were quiet, muffled by the ground. Around her, the wind picked up speed, casting a chill through her frail figure.

"Doctor." She said the name, the word tumbling out of her mouth like a silent prayer. "Come back."

But he could not answer her.

"I said come back! Come back!" She drew herself up and threw grass towards his final resting place. "It isn't fair! Why were you the one who had to die? I wish it were me." She breathed out the last sentence as if it were a confession. Swallowing, Rose said thickly. "I wish I were dead."

Once more, she looked at the impressive white marble headstone before her. Doctor John Noble-Smith.

His epitaph contained just four short words. _The Stuff of Legend_

Rose swallowed her last sob she would cry that day. Her bones creaking from the uncomfortable position she had held for so long, she got up and dusted the pieces of grass off of her wet trousers.

"Someday."

She wished that day would come soon.

* * *

The Doctor, the proper one, the one in the universe he properly belonged to –or, he thought he belonged to, but he was always moving around, and he was good and properly old, so maybe he didn't belong to this universe-maybe he belonged to one with bananas and no apples and lots and lots of bowties and fezzes and also lots of duck ponds with good and proper ducks swimming in said ponds and quacking like ducks in a duck pond should quack, which, he guessed, is probably very heartily, if quacks can be hearty-he would have to figure that out, because really he didn't have the slightest of a clue, and that was rare for him, and frankly he wasn't too fond of the feeling- was dancing around the console, laughing giddly, ignoring the sparks flying from the two loose large wires in the TARDIS's underbelly.

"Right, Sexy old Gal, if I'm right, and I probably am because I'm most right about most everything most of the time on most of my adventures-hmm… that was a lot of 'mosts'.. most, most, most-IF I am right about it, then I should be able to hop across the universes without ripping a hold in time and space, without causing any paradoxes, and without creating any sort of chaos whatsoever. Ask me why, Sexy. Go on." The Doctor flicked his fringe of light brown hair back and fixed his bowtie pompously. A small hum came from his machine.

"Because of Big Bang 2.0. Because I am a genius, and because I am an Impossible Man who does impossible things and makes them possible. SO!" He brought one lever down and then back up, hit a few buttons, spun around, and grasped his console as if his lives depended on it.

"Geronimo!"

But what the Doctor didn't realize, as he catapulted through the Vortex, the first laugh in a long while accompanying the _whorp-whorp _of the TARDIS's engines, was how wrong he was. But one mustn't blame the Doctor for this, because he is rarely wrong. There was one thing that would be impossible to do on his journey, and it would destroy him.

This was the beginning of the end for the Doctor.

…_. Sorry? I hope you all enjoyed it, though. While writing this, I was sort of reminded of the first chapter, so I hope that isn't… bad. Happy 2013, by the way_! _Do you have any resolutions? I have an idea if you don't, and it's easy to uphold… review review review! (how about, like, five maybe to get an update?) And follow! Reviews make me happy, and a happy writer means lots of updates- though I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to in the next few weeks (schools, research papers, midterms, typical excuses, blah blah blah)_

_Anyway, happy weekend everyone- stay awesome! _


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